WVU Study: How CNG/LNG Vehicles Can Lower Methane Emissions
Researchers at West Virginia University have just published a new study that looks at how to reduce methane emissions from LNG (liquefied natural gas) and CNG (compressed natural gas) fleet vehicles in coming years. Today’s heavy-duty natural gas fueled fleet is less than two percent of the total fleet. However, in the next 20 years, the heavy-duty truck fleet is expected to undergo a massive change–to as much as 50% of those vehicles powered by natural gas. That is a HUGE number! And potentially a huge new market for Marcellus/Utica gas! Natgas has a lot of advantages over diesel fuel, but folks are concerned over the mythical global warming potential of methane leaking into the atmosphere. Hence this study which looks at ways to prevent that…
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Anti-fossil fuel activists attempting to stop the unstoppable Rover Pipeline are doing their best to smear and prejudice people against the project. Rover has had its share of problems. We’ve chronicled those problems–like leaking 2 million gallons of drilling mud in Ohio when performing underground horizontal directional drilling (see 
The West Virginia Legislature has appointed a new Joint Committee on Natural Gas Development, composed of Senators and Delegates, to put their collective heads together to see how they can encourage more oil and gas development in the Mountain State. The committee will meet tomorrow for the first time. The effort is being supported by the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA). In general, it certainly seems like a good idea–WV needs more drilling. However, WVONGA plans to use the committee as a platform to push its “modernized mineral efficiency laws”–i.e. forced pooling lite. As we reported last week, WVONGA is making an all-out push for new forced pooling laws in 2018 (see 
Carbon Natural Gas Company, through its affiliate Carbon Appalachian Company, teased in a press release issued yesterday that the company has just completed the acquisition of “natural gas producing properties and related facilities” located “predominantly in the State of West Virginia” for $21.5 million. The release does not identify the seller–but MDN believes we know who it is: Cabot Oil & Gas. We supply our evidence below. Carbon Natural Gas is an independent oil and gas exploration and production company (i.e. “driller”) that owns, operates and develops oil and gas properties in the Appalachian, Illinois and Ventura Basin areas of the U.S. Most of the wells they own and operate are conventional. However, in April the company began dipping its toe into unconventional shale as well (see 
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is not taking a ludicrous, outrageous lawsuit by anti-pipeline residents from West Virginia and Virginia lying down. They are fighting mad as recent court filings show. MVP is a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. A lawsuit was filed in federal court at the end of July to block the MVP project (see 
The West Virginia Oil & Natural Gas Association (WVONGA) plans to push, once again, for what MDN calls forced pooling lite in the next session of the legislature scheduled for early 2018. Forced pooling legislation in West Virginia has been put forward five times in the past seven years–and each time it has failed to win enough votes in the WV legislature. This year, WVONGA changed tactics and renamed forced pooling as co-tenancy and joint development (see 
Of the three Marcellus/Utica producing states–Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia–only WV reports well production on an annual basis. Not frequent enough! In July WV published production numbers for 2016. The exciting news is that on average, initial production (IP) of Marcellus/Utica shale wells surged 20% over 2015. IP is the amount of gas (or oil or NGLs) flowing from a well. However, when you dig into the numbers, you learn that IP rates did not go up universally across the state. Some counties had big increases, other counties went the other way. The same with drillers. Some drillers (like Antero) saw a big bump up in average IP rates. Other’s (like Southwestern Energy) saw a dip in IP rates from 2015 to 2016…
Yesterday the American Petroleum Institute (API) released a new study showing that the natural gas and oil industry supported 10.3 million U.S. jobs and added $1.3 trillion to the nation’s economy in 2015. The study, “Impacts of the Natural Gas and Oil Industry on the US Economy in 2015” (full copy below) found that jobs supported by the o&g industry increased by half a million since 2011, and showed that all 50 states, whether producing or non-producing, continued to benefit from the o&g industry. The study was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and commissioned by API. Yes, it’s an industry-funded study. But hey, if we don’t do the research and toot our own horn, you can be sure anti-fossil fuelers won’t do it for us! This is solid, no-nonsense (and real) economic research. We thought it would be interesting to look at the impact of the o&g industry in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia–the only three states producing Marcellus and Utica Shale gas and oil. Yes, each of those states still has a thriving conventional o&g industry as well and conventional numbers are part of the study–but let’s be honest. The unconventional (shale) sector dwarfs production of the conventional sector. When you look at o&g’s impact in our region, you find that it created 322,600 jobs in PA, 262,800 jobs in OH, and 70,900 jobs in WV. Value added (economic impact) for each state was: $44.4 billion in PA, $37.9 billion in OH, and $8 billion in WV. Add them all together and you get roughly 656,000 jobs and $90 billion of economic contribution in 2015. From one industry–oil and gas. WE LOVE FOSSIL FUELS!…
When a state produces more energy than it consumes, that state is a net energy “supplier” (or exporter). States consume energy in the form of oil, gas, coal and electricity, primarily. They produce energy in the same way. Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, recently released State Energy Data System estimates for net energy supply, state by state, from 1960-2015. Their analysis found that currently, for the year 2015, some 12 states produced more primary energy than they consumed, while 38 states and the District of Columbia were net recipients of energy. Among the state producing more than they consume, two of the top five are Marcellus Shale states: Pennsylvania and West Virginia. PA’s net supplier status is due mostly to the rise of the Marcellus. In the case of WV, the state still is a big coal producer, but it is the Marcellus that lifts the state into the column of net energy supplier…
In February the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a draft final environmental impact statement (DEIS) for two important pipeline upgrades to carry more Marcellus/Utica gas to southern markets–Mountaineer XPress and Gulf XPress (see 
In June, a group of radical “environmental” organizations filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit against the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection–for doing their job (see 
West Virginia’s U.S. Senators, Shelley Moore Capito (Republican) and Joe Manchin (Democrat), continue to be a driving force in advocating for a $10 billion NGL storage hub to be located in WV, PA or OH. Back in May, Capito and Manchin introduced a bill to study such a project (see 
We spotted an editorial in the Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail written by Kevin DiGregorio, executive director of the nonprofit Chemical Alliance Zone (CAZ). According to the CAZ website, the organization “works with partners across West Virginia to boost and maintain investments and jobs in the chemical industry and related industries, including natural gas, manufacturing, and technology in general. We create, initiate, and facilitate business opportunities, leading to opportunities for you, your business or organization, and the State of West Virginia.” In other words, Mr. DiGregorio and the CAZ are at the nexus of many deals to bring petrochemical businesses to the Mountain State. So if anyone should know what may be “up the sleeve” and soon to be revealed, it’s Mr. DiGregorio. He hinted at it in his column. Writing that everyone has heard about the potential for a Braskem ethane cracker plant in Parkersburg (a project that appears to still be alive), Mr. DiGregoorio then says, “What you haven’t heard are all of the other potential (and confidential) projects that many of us are working on that might lead to new facilities and high-paying STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) jobs that take advantage of methane and NGLs (ethane, propane, butane) to make various chemicals and plastics.” Wow! He seems to be saying there are a lot of projects in the works for WV in the downstream–those businesses that use the output from the shale industry…
Being a marketing guy, MDN editor Jim Willis knows that crystallizing a concept into a few key words is critical. You have to be able to convey your meaning in as few words as possible–and those words must be pregnant with meaning. Jim was lucky enough to name this blog/news site Marcellus Drilling News, which (mostly) conveys its purpose–to report on happenings in the Marcellus (later adding the Utica) region. A very smart person who’s given a lot of thought about our industry is Kathryn “Katie” Klaber. Katie owns her own consulting firm–The Klaber Group. But before that, she was founder and president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition (a well-named organization). Katie lives and works in Pittsburgh. In a recent article for the Pittsburgh Business Times, Katie ponders over Pittsburgh (and our industry’s) “identity crisis”–by which she means our lack of good branding. Sometimes our industry and region is referred to as “Appalachia.” But that term often connotes the mountains of West Virginia, spreading out into Kentucky. Sometimes we are referred to as the “Marcellus/Utica basin,” which gets a lot closer to meaningful, but connotes drilling and leaves out the downstream. And sometimes we’re called “the Northeast.” But folks in Ohio consider themselves Midwesterners, not northeasterners. Why is it important to lock down an accurate, pregnant-with-meaning description for our entire industry (upstream, midstream and downstream), and our geographic region? According to Katie, it comes down to two words: capital investment. We need to brand ourselves and do it sooner rather than later, if we want to grow business in our neck of the woods…
In March of this year, the Team Pennsylvania Foundation released a report called “Prospects to Enhance Pennsylvania’s Opportunities in Petrochemical Manufacturing” (see